Maroon 5 is an American pop rock band that originated in Los Angeles, California.[3][4] The group was formed in 1994 as Kara's Flowers while its members were still in high school and originally consisted of Adam Levine (lead vocals, guitar), Jesse Carmichael (guitar, backing vocals) Mickey Madden (bass guitar) and Ryan Dusick (drums). The band was named after a girl the complete group had a crush on. [Maroon 5: Maroon 5: Midnight Miles. MTV (USA), 2006] Kara's Flowers signed to Reprise Records and released an album, The Fourth World, in 1997. After a tepid response to the album, the band parted ways with the record label and the members attended college.

In 2001, the band regrouped, with guitarist James Valentine added to the line-up, and pursued a new direction under the name Maroon 5.[5] At this point, Carmichael switched to playing keyboards, which has since become his main instrument in the band. After these changes, Maroon 5 signed with Octone Records and released their debut album, Songs About Jane, in June 2002. The album's lead single "Harder to Breathe", received heavy airplay, which helped the album to debut at number six on the Billboard 200 chart.[6] The band won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2005. For the next few years, they toured extensively worldwide in support of Songs About Jane and produced two live recordings: 2004's 1.22.03.Acoustic and 2005's Live – Friday the 13th.[7] In 2006, Dusick officially left Maroon 5 after suffering from serious wrist and shoulder injuries and was replaced by Matt Flynn. The band then recorded their second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long and released it in May 2007.[8] The album reached number one on the US Billboard 200 chart and the lead single, "Makes Me Wonder", became the band's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100.

In September 2010, Maroon 5 released their third studio album Hands All Over, which was re-released in 2011 to include the single "Moves like Jagger". While the original version of the album received mixed reviews, "Moves like Jagger" reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100. The band released their fourth album, Overexposed, on June 26, 2012. All four singles of the album were highly successful on the Billboard Hot 100, including second single "One More Night", which reached number one. In 2014, the band signed with Interscope Records and released their fifth studio album, V, with the very-first line-up of six official band members, as keyboardist and backing vocalist PJ Morton became an official member in 2012. The album debuted atop the Billboard 200. Maroon 5 have sold more than 15 million albums in the United States and 27 million albums worldwide.[9]

Adam Levine was introduced to Ryan Dusick by a mutual friend and aspiring guitar player, Adam Salzman. Levine was seven years old and Dusick was nine.[10] The four original members of the band met while attending Brentwood School in Los Angeles.[11][12] While attending Brentwood School, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers,[13] a pop band. The name was taken from a groupie that the band had a "collective crush" on.[12] In 1997 when they were playing a beach party in Malibu, indie producer Tommy Allen heard them play and offered to manage them and record a complete record with his partner, songwriter John DeNicola, who is known for his work on Dirty Dancing – including "(I've Had) The Time of My Life". Producer Rob Cavallo's management team heard the record Allen and DeNicola produced, which eventually led Cavallo to offer them a deal with Reprise Records.[14] However, after the release of The Fourth World in 1997, they had morphed into band with a style reminiscent of 1960s Britpop.[12] Despite high expectations from the band and record company, the album failed to catch on and their lead single, "Soap Disco", was a failure.[15] According to Levine, the failure of the album was "a huge disappointment" that nearly led them to break up in 1998.[12][16] The album sold around 5,000 copies and they were dropped after only one month.[17]

Dusick and Madden attended college locally at UCLA, while Levine and Carmichael relocated to the East coast to attend Five Towns College, in Dix Hills, Long Island, New York.[18] While Levine and Carmichael were in New York, they began to take notice of the urban music surrounding them and later let the style influence the songs they wrote.[19]

The band returned to the music industry again in 2000.[16]Sam Farrar says the Aaliyah song "Are You That Somebody?" affected the band and influenced the song "Not Coming Home."[12] Producer Tim Sommer signed them to a demo deal with MCA Records and produced three tracks with them in Los Angeles in the middle of 2000 with Mark Dearnley engineering. Against Sommer's advice, MCA declined to pick up the band, and these tracks were never released. The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman and David Boxenbaum.[16] While looking for talent for the new Octone label, Berkman was given a bunch of demos by the brother of a former colleague at Columbia Records and the song that caught his attention was "'Sunday Morning'" which he referred it as a "genius song".[17] Berkman was surprised the song was credited to Kara's Flowers because they sounded completely different from the band he had heard while at Warner Brothers.[20]

Berkman encouraged Diener and Boxenbaum to fly out to Los Angeles to watch a showcase gig at The Viper Room for the four-piece Kara's Flowers.[17] After watching Levine onstage, they were convinced. Berkman told HitQuarters he believed what the band needed was a "fifth member to play the guitar and free up the singer, so he could be the star I perceived him to be."[17] Octone immediately insisted that the band change its name to break with its pop past.[17] Also, the label began looking for a full-time guitarist to enable Levine to focus on performing as the frontman. James Valentine (from the L.A. band Square) was recruited for the job.[16] On his joining the band, Valentine commented: "I became friends with them and we sort of started jamming together, it was very much like I was cheating on my band, we were having sort of an affair and I eventually quit my other band to join up with them."[16]

"Between the time that we started making the album [Songs About Jane] in 2001 and the time the album reached the crest of its success in 2004, we went from being starving musicians wondering what the future held to riding a wave of success beyond our wildest expectations."

—Ryan Dusick, Maroon 5's original drummer, who officially left the band in 2006 due to injuries sustained from constant touring[21]

Songs About Jane eventually reached No. 1 on the Australian albums (ARIA),[36] while "Harder to Breathe" made the Top 20 singles charts in the US[37] and UK,[36] and Top 40 in Australia and New Zealand.[36] The album also eventually climbed to No. 1 in the UK.[36] The second single, "This Love", reached No. 5 in the US,[37] No. 3 in the UK, and No. 8 in Australia.[36] The third single, "She Will Be Loved," reached the Top 5 in both the US[37] and the UK, and went to No. 1 in Australia.[36] The fourth single, "Sunday Morning," reached the Top 40 in the US,[37] UK, and Australia.[36] Maroon 5 also played Live 8, in Philadelphia in 2005. Their set included a cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" and frontman Levine performed with one of his heroes, and the closing act, Stevie Wonder.[38] On May 13, 2005, in Santa Barbara, California, the band wrapped up the Honda Civic Tour, which they headlined.[39] On June 9, 2005, the band performed at the American Film Institute's tribute to filmmaker George Lucas. Lucas himself had selected Maroon 5 for the event, as they were his children's favorite band at the time.[40] Over the years of touring with the band their drummer, percussionist and backing vocalist Ryan Dusick had been suffering from the touring life.[41] The strains of non-stop touring aggravated an old sports injury.[11] After several absences from the tour with Ryland Steen and Josh Day taking his place, Dusick officially left Maroon 5 in September 2006. Matt Flynn, the former drummer of Gavin DeGraw and the B-52's, joined the band as Dusick's replacement.[42]

After recording for 8 months in 2006, Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, was released worldwide in May 2007 by A&M/Octone Records.,[43] According to Levine, the follow-up to Songs About Jane is "sexier and stronger",[44] gaining inspiration from iconic 80s artists such as Prince, Shabba Ranks, Michael Jackson and Talking Heads.[45] Ann Powers writing for Los Angeles Times said It Won't Be Soon Long is "An icy-hot blend of electro-funk and blue-eyed soul that works its cruel streak with the confidence of Daniel Craig's James Bond".[46] Before its release, "Makes Me Wonder" was the No. 1 selling single and video on iTunes.[44] It was also the No. 1 selling album, with more than 50,000 digital pre-sales.[44] After its release, the album broke iTunes sales records its week of release, selling over 101,000 albums.[47] The first single, "Makes Me Wonder," was released to radio March 27, 2007. The song debuted at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100, the lowest debuting single of the group's five chart entries. In the first week of May, the single skyrocketed from a lowly position of No. 64 to No. 1, the biggest jump in Billboard history at the time.[48] "Makes Me Wonder" has also achieved No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs, Pop 100, and Hot Dance Club Play charts.[49]

Levine stated that he believed the band was reaching its peak and may make one more album before disbanding.[58] He explained: "Eventually I want to focus on being a completely different person because I don’t know if I want to do this into my 40s and 50s and beyond, like the Rolling Stones".[59]

On June 12, 2011 the band re-released the album "Hands All Over" just to include their summer hit "Moves like Jagger" featuring Christina Aguilera.[64][65] The album received mixed reviews from music critics, though many of them praised it for its production. The song premiered live of The Voice on June 21, 2011 and reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 2011. Frontman Levine was also featured in the Gym Class Heroes' song "Stereo Hearts", which peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. On September 8, 2011, Jesse Carmichael stated the band was likely to begin recording its next album within the year.[66] On October 1, 2011, the band performed live at the Rock in Rio concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[67] Maroon 5 was a last hour addition, chosen to fill the vacant spot left by Jay-Z after he cancelled his appearance for personal reasons.[68] The band launched a Snapple flavor named "Tea Will Be Loved" in support of Feeding America in September 2011.[69]

Maroon 5 performed "Moves Like Jagger" and "Stereo Hearts" with Travie McCoy on November 5, 2011 on Saturday Night Live. They also performed "Moves Like Jagger" and "Stereo Hearts" with Aguilera and Gym Class Heroes on November 20, 2011 on the American Music Awards, where they won their first AMA for Favorite Pop Band/Duo/Group. The band also performed "Moves Like Jagger" at the 2011 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.[70] During a promotion by Coca-Cola in the March of 2011, the band participated in a special studio session during which, with the help of musician PJ Morton, they had 24 hours to write a completely original song. After their time was up, the song "Is Anybody Out There" was released on the Coca-Cola website for free download. In 2012, the band recorded a song for The Hunger Gamessoundtrack, called "Come Away to the Water" featuring Rozzi Crane. At the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, on February 12, 2012, the group performed alongside Foster the People and the Beach Boys in a medley of the Beach Boys songs to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary.[71]

On March 9, 2012, Maroon 5 announced that Jesse Carmichael would take a break from performing with the group for an undetermined amount of time to focus more on his studies of "music and the healing arts" (spiritual healing). The band continued to work on their fourth studio album Overexposed released on June 26, 2012, with the help of keyboardist and background vocalist PJ Morton, who had been touring with them since 2010 and became a full-time band member after the announcement.[72] Levine stated that Overexposed is their "most diverse and poppiest album yet".[73] On April 16, 2012, the band premiered the first single from the album "Payphone" featuring Wiz Khalifa, on the reality competition television show The Voice, in which Levine is one of the judges and coaches. The song debuted number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, before being peaked to number two. The second single "One More Night", was released on June 19, 2012. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, managed to beat Psy's "Gangnam Style" and stayed in the chart for nine weeks consecutively and tied with Carly Rae Jepsen's hit single "Call Me Maybe".[74] The two songs had the most number of weeks in the number 1 spot on the Hot 100 Chart in 2012.[74]

At the start of their Overexposed World Tour in South America, Maroon 5 introduced the newest addition in the band to the audience: their old and close friend Sam Farrar on guitars, occasionally on the bass guitar, percussion, backing vocals, turntables and providing samples and other special effects (using the MPC).[75] Farrar co-wrote and co-produced a few of the band's songs on almost all of their studio albums and also remixed their song "Woman" (from the "Spider-Man 2" soundtrack) on Call and Response: The Remix Album, released in 2008.[76]

On November 27, 2012, the band released "Daylight", the third single from the album. To promote the song, the band has launched a video project called "The Daylight Project". The project encouraged fans to film their own segments for inclusion in the official music video for "Daylight", directed by Jonas Åkerlund. "Daylight" was performed for the first time as a single on November 8, 2012, during an episode of the American version of The Voice and the official video was released on December 10, 2012.[77][78]

In April 2013, James Valentine said the band was in the studio recording songs for the upcoming fifth studio album: "The stuff we're working on now, it definitely has gone maybe a little darker in its sound, maybe back a little bit more to what we kind of did on Songs About Jane, but at this point we do have all kinds of different songs and it is early".[83]

On May 18, 2014, it was announced that the band would release their fifth album - V - on September 2, 2014, through Interscope Records. The first single, "Maps", was released on June 16, 2014.[86] The single peaked number 6 on the Hot 100 chart.[87] After releasing the album V on September 2, 2014 it reached number one on the US Billboard 200 chart on September 20, 2014.[88][89]V received mixed reviews from critics. Brad Wete, writing for Billboard, said: "Levine's hummingbird vocals and passionate delivery are as earnest as they were on their 2002 debut Songs About Jane."[90]

On August 10, 2014, the band headlined the Hyundai Card City Break, a rock festival in South Korea. Maroon 5 also performed during the 2014 iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse in London, England, on September 11, 2014 (all of the concerts played as part of the festival were filmed and webcast live, around the world).[91] The second single from V, "Animals", was first featured in a Kia Soul commercial and made available for free download on the official Kia website for a limited time after the advert premiered on August 21, 2014.[92] The song has so far peaked on number 3 on the Hot 100 chart.[87]

"I think the classic Maroon 5 song is minor, and it has some funk, Nile Rodgers-style guitar and the lyrics are probably about getting your heart broken. So minor, funk and heartbreak -- that’s the Maroon 5 formula."

Adam Levine has stated: "[E]verything that's written and performed and put together pretty much comes from us. I just think people would be surprised to know that we’re a self-contained unit. We’re a band that does their own thing. There’s no puppet master."[98]

However, in an article about the songwriter and producer Benny Blanco, it is revealed that at least some of the band's songs, such as "Moves Like Jagger," are the product of efforts by, or collaborations with, professional songwriters and producers.[99] In the same article, Adam Levine is quoted as saying: "It's almost as if [Benny Blanco] has the Midas touch in putting the right people together at the right time to create a musical moment. He's about the collaboration. And he’s so good at nailing down who does everything best."[100]

The band's sound changes from album to album. Songs About Jane consists of songs about Levine's ex-girlfriend Jane. On It Won't Be Soon Before Long, however, the songs are less personal and are more electric with more use of synthesizers, creating a retro feel. Hands All Over continues the band's lost love theme, along with songs about infatuation and was re-released in 2011, with the hit single "Moves like Jagger", an electropop song which represents a drastic change in the band's sound, with more of a dance feel to it. "It was one of those songs that was definitely a risk," Levine said. "It's a bold statement. We've never really released a song like that. But it's exciting to do something different, do something new. I'm just glad that everyone likes it."[103] James Valentine called the Overexposed album "our most 'pop' record ever and we weren’t shy about really going for it."[104]

Hands All Over, the band's third studio album, which was released in September 2010, peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2011, the album was re-released and supported by the single "Moves like Jagger", a song featuring American singer Christina Aguilera. The song became the band's second single to reach number one on the Hot 100 chart; it has sold over 14.4 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles worldwide.[118] The band released their fourth studio album, Overexposed, in June 2012. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. The first two singles from the album "Payphone" and "One More Night", were both international hits and peaked at two and one on the Hot 100 chart respectively.[119] "One More Night", managed to beat Psy's "Gangnam Style" by reaching number one on Billboard Hot 100 and stayed tied with Carly Rae Jepsen's hit single "Call Me Maybe" for most number of weeks.[74] Adam Levine also gained popularity as one of the judges on NBC's talent competition The Voice.[120]

Maroon 5 has been a longtime supporter of Aid Still Required (ASR). After contributing the live version of "She Will Be Loved" to ASR's All Star CD in support of the survivors of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami,[124][125] Maroon 5 went on to record a public service announcement for ASR about work that still needed to be done in Haiti. Maroon 5 has participated in various ASR social media campaigns[126] and Levine has donated a meet and greet on the set of The Voice to raise funds for various ASR programs.[127]

Maroon 5 supports the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation

In 2006, Maroon 5 has been awarded Environmental Media Awards, due to donating their 2005 North American tour income to a global environment organization, called "Global Cool"[128]

In 2011, Maroon 5 (along with PJ Morton, who was the band's touring member at the time) took part in a project named "24 Hour Session" with Coca-Cola. They wrote and recorded a song, entitled "Is Anybody Out There?", in 24 hours. After the project came to an end, the track was made available on the Coca-Cola website. It was also announced that if the song would be downloaded more than 100,000 times, the band will donate to Africa for clean water.[129]

Adam Levine, whose brother is openly gay, is an outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights.[130] In 2011, he made a video on Maroon 5's official YouTube account in support of the It Gets Better Project.[131] In January 2012, he announced that Maroon 5 had changed the location of their post-Grammy Awards show because of the "unnamed Los Angeles restaurant's backing of Proposition 8".[130]

^Along with 14 other artists who donated tracks to the album including Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and Norah Jones, Maroon 5 donated the live recording of "She Will Be Loved" to ASR's All-Star CD to support victims in the aftermath of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami.